WHITEHALL CHOIR Conductor PAUL SPICER Organ JAMES LONGFORD Holy Trinity Sloane Squ PARRY I was glad, Songs of Farewell, Blest Pair of Sirens FINZI Lo, the full, final Sacrifice BRITTEN Rejoice in the Lamb are Slo View from Exmoor Window by Anthony Krikhaar Programme £2 Friday 15 April 2011 at 7.30pm Holy Trinity Sloane Square Sloane Street, London SW1X 9BZ at 7.30pm PROGRAMME Hubert Parry I was glad Gerald Finzi Lo, the full, final Sacrifice Benjamin Britten Rejoice in the Lamb I N T E R V A L Hubert Parry Songs of Farewell Blest Pair of Sirens The concert is expected to end at approximately 9 pm. Hubert Parry (1848­1918) Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet, was born in Bournemouth, the youngest of six children of Thomas Gambier Parry (1816­1888) of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire, and his first wife, Isabella née Clinton (1816­1848). Three of their children died in infancy, and Isabella Parry died twelve days after the birth of her sixth child. Parry grew up at Highnam Court with his surviving siblings, (Charles) Clinton and Lucy. Thomas Parry remarried in 1851, and had a further six children. After Twyford Preparatory School in Hampshire Parry went on to Eton, where his interest in music was encouraged and developed. While there he distinguished himself at sports as well as music, despite early signs of the heart trouble that was to dog him for the rest of his life. He took music lessons with Sir George Job Elvey, the organist of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and composed many prentice works. While still at Eton Parry successfully sat the Oxford Bachelor of Music examination, the youngest person who had ever done so. His examination exercise, a cantata, O Lord, Thou hast cast us out, “astonished” the Oxford Professor of Music, Sir Frederick Ouseley, and was triumphantly performed and published in 1867. However, on going up to Oxford, Parry did not study music, and instead read law and modern history. From 1870 to 1877 he was an underwriter at Lloyd’s of London and in 1872 he married Lady Elizabeth Maude Herbert (1851­1933). However, Parry proved as unsuccessful in insurance as he was successful in music. Parry and his wife had two daughters. Parry continued his musical studies alongside his work in insurance. He had already studied in Stuttgart with the English­born composer Henry Hugh Pearson (better known in Germany as Heinrich Hugo Pierson), and afterwards took lessons from William Sterndale Bennett, and later the pianist Edward Dannreuther, “wisest and most sympathetic of teachers”. Dannreuther started by giving Parry piano lessons, but soon extended their studies to analysis and composition, and it was Dannreuther who introduced him to the music of Wagner. Parry’s first major works appeared in 1880: a piano concerto, which Dannreuther premiered, and a choral setting of scenes from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. The first performance of the latter has often been held to mark the start of a ‘renaissance’ in English classical music, but was regarded by many critics as too avant­garde. Parry scored a greater contemporary success with the ode Blest Pair of Sirens (1887), commissioned by and dedicated to Charles Villiers Stanford, who was to describe Parry as the greatest English composer since Purcell. The success of Blest Pair of Sirens had the drawback of bringing him a series of commissions for conventional oratorios, a genre with which he was not in sympathy. At the same time as his compositions were coming to public notice, Parry was taken up as a musical scholar by George Grove, first as his assistant editor for his new Dictionary of Music and Musicians, to which post Parry was appointed in 1875 and contributed 123 articles. He wrote prolifically on music throughout his adult life. In 1883, Grove, as the first Director of the new Royal College of Music, appointed him as the College’s professor of composition and musical history. Parry’s subsequent commissions included the Ode on Saint Cecilia’s Day (1889), the oratorios Judith (1888) and Job (1892), the psalm­setting De Profundis (1891) and a lighter work, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1905), described later as “a bubbling well of humour”. The biblical oratorios were well received by the public, but George Bernard Shaw denounced Job as “the most utter failure ever achieved by a thoroughly respectworthy musician. There is not one bar in it that comes within fifty thousand miles of the tamest line in the poem.” Parry’s orchestral music includes five symphonies, a set of Symphonic Variations in E minor, the Overture to an Unwritten Tragedy (1893) and the Elegy for Brahms (1897). Over the years he wrote music to accompany productions of plays by Aristophanes at Oxford and Cambridge. He also provided incidental music for a West End production by Beerbohm Tree, Hypatia (1893). However, his only attempt at opera, Guenever, was turned down by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Parry succeeded George Grove as director of the Royal College of Music in January 1895, and held the post until his death. In 1900 he succeeded John Stainer as professor of music at Oxford. An obituarist in 1918 lamented these calls on Parry’s time: “A composer who counts is rare enough anywhere, any time. ... A great blow was delivered against English music when Parry was appointed to succeed Sir George Grove as director of the RCM.” However, despite the demands of these posts his personal beliefs, which were Darwinian and humanist, led him to compose a series of ‘ethical cantatas’, with which he hoped to supersede the traditional oratorio and cantata forms. They were generally unsuccessful with the public, though Edward Elgar admired The Vision of Life (1907), and The Soul’s Ransom (1906) has had several modern performances. Parry evolved a powerful diatonic style which itself greatly influenced younger contemporaries such as Elgar and Vaughan Williams. His own full development as a composer was almost certainly hampered by the immense amount of work he took on; but his energy and charisma, not to mention his abilities as a teacher and administrator, helped establish art music at the centre of English cultural life. As head of the Royal College of Music, he numbered among his leading pupils not just Ralph Vaughan Williams, but also Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge and John Ireland. Parry was created a Knight Bachelor in 1898. He was made a baronet in King Edward VII’s Coronation Honours List of June 1902. In 1908 Parry resigned his Oxford appointment and in the last decade of his life produced some of his best­known works, including the Symphonic Fantasia ‘1912’ (also called ‘Symphony No. 5’), the Ode on the Nativity (1912), Jerusalem (1916) and the Songs of Farewell (1916­1918). The setting of William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’ was immediately taken up by the suffragette movement, with which both Parry and his wife were strongly in sympathy. Parry, as a friend of German music and culture in general, was in despair when the First World War broke out. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: “During the war he watched a life’s work of progress and education being wiped away as the male population – particularly the new fertile generation of composing talent – of the Royal College dwindled.”. In the autumn of 1918 Parry contracted Spanish flu during the global pandemic and died. At the suggestion of Stanford he was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. The site of his birthplace in Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, next door to The Square, is marked with a blue plaque, and there is a memorial tablet with an inscription by Bridges in Gloucester Cathedral, which was unveiled during the Three Choirs Festival of 1922. I was glad I was glad (Latin incipit, Lætatus sum) is an introit commonly used in the Anglican church, and also used as an anthem traditionally sung at the coronation of British monarchs. The text of the anthem consists of verses from Psalm 122, from the psalter found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Most of the content of the psalm is a prayer for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem, and its use in the coronation service clearly draws a parallel between Jerusalem and the United Kingdom, as William Blake had in his poem Jerusalem (which Parry set to music later, in 1916). Its most famous setting, the one written in 1902 by Sir Hubert Parry, which is being performed tonight, includes only verses 1­3, 6, and 7. Settings for earlier coronations were composed by Henry Purcell and William Boyce, among others. Parry’s version was written for the coronation of King Edward VII and revised in 1911 for that of King George V, when the familiar introduction was added. This setting employs antiphonal choir effects and brass fanfares. Apart from the imperial splendour of the music, the chief innovation is the incorporation in the central section of the acclamations “Vivat Rex ...” or “Vivat Regina ...” (“Long live King/Queen ...”) with which the Queen’s Scholars of Westminster School traditionally greet the entrance of the monarch. However, as will be the case this evening, this section, which has to be slightly rewritten every time a new monarch is crowned, is more usually omitted when the anthem is performed on non­royal occasions. I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand in thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is at unity in itself. Semi­chorus O pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee.